The present invention relates to electronic chronograph watches.
In many watches of this type, the time is indicated by an hour hand and a minute hand rotating about the centre of the watch and by an off-centre second hand, called small second hand, generally placed at six o""clock.
In certain of these watches the indication of a measured time is achieved by means of a centre second hand concentric to the hour and minute hands for indicating the current time and two other small off-centre hands, situated at ten o""clock and two o""clock, which display the hours, up to 12 or 24 hours, and the minutes, generally up to 30 minutes.
In other watches which allow more precise timing, the measured seconds and minutes and indicated by two large hands concentric to the hour and minute hands for displaying the current time and two small hands at ten o""clock and two o""clock for indicating the hours and tenths or twentieths of a second.
In both cases, these watches have the drawback, all least for certain people who complain of this, of not enabling the indication of the current seconds to be easily read when the watch operates normally, i.e. most of the time.
On the other hand, there also exist electronic chronograph watches wherein the small second hand is omitted and which include a centre second hand which is used for displaying the seconds of the current time when the watch operates normally and the measured seconds when the watch is used in chronograph mode.
These watches which enable the seconds to be easily read in normal time have another drawback.
Indeed, while the watch is operating in chronograph mode, the user no longer has the indication of the seconds of the current time, which may be inconvenient for him, especially when the measured time is long and may last for several hours. For example, if the user wishes to set his watch to the correct time, to the second, while he is using the chronograph function, he cannot.
The object of the present invention is to remove these drawbacks of existing watches and this object is achieved as a result of the features of the chronograph watch defined in the claims.
Interesting complementary features of the invention are defined in the sub-claims.